sweetest moment in Silly Symphony

[rougescrooge]

Which was your most heartwarming part in the entire series? For me it would have to be the little rabbit's reunion with its family after Little Hiawatha decides to spare it. While the concept of the "cute Disney bunny" may have become a cultural cliche of sorts, you really can't help feeling sorry for the little guy in his terror at the prospect of being shot dead. Nor for the other rabbits in the throwaway shot we get of them and how heartbroken they are that they might lose him. In 9 1/2 minutes you come to see the rabbits as a genuine family, which too many full scale films fail miserably to capture, and that they'd be there for each other (take the earlier scene in Hiawatha's first assault where one bunny protects another--after that one exposed itself to save the squirrel that didn't get out of the clearing in time) by leaping between it and our hero and leads him off so his sibling can escape). So when the bunny rushes back to them, and they smother him with unconditional affection in their relief, we can't help feeling our hearts have been warmed to know that from an Indian's act of kindness, they're whole again (although it's funny in a way that Mama, whom I'm assuming is the adult rabbit on the right, initially leaps 10 feet in the air to see her baby safe, then has to sniff quizzically at him for a few seconds while Papa and the other bunnies dish out the love and affection before acknowledging for good that he's alive and well.